NBC Fires Lilia Luciano Over George Zimmerman Tape Edit

In the continuing saga of NBC's prejudicial editing of George Zimmerman's call to police to report a suspicious person, Trayon Martin, TV Newser reports NBC reporter Lilia Luciano has been fired. But keep reading, I have additional information and transcripts with sourcing to NBC shows.

According to TV Newser, a different version of the mangled edit appeared in a Luciano segment on the Today Show on March 20. So we're up to three airings of clips with Zimmerman comments taken out of sequence on the Today Show. [More...]

The March 20 version of the clip played in Luciano's Today Show segment had a different line out of sequence than her March 22 segment. But it was also unfairly prejudicial to Zimmerman.

Mr. GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: This guys looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. He's got his hands in his waistband and he's a black male.
Unidentified 911 Operator #1: Are you following him?
Mr. ZIMMERMAN: Yeah.
Operator #1: OK, we don't need you to do that.
(End of clip)

While the March 22 version of the clip that aired during Luciano's segment was different than the March 20 version, it was the same as the clip that aired on the Today Show on March 27 with Ron Allen. It was the March 27 version that caused the initial furor.

In checking LexisNexis last night, I noticed the March 27 Today Show segment was the second time the Today Show used the inappropriate edit. The first was on March 22, 2012, in a segment titled "Fallout from the Trayvon Martin shooting includes calls for Sanford police chief to resign". The segment featured a live report by NBC reporter Lilia Luciano in Sanford. The video, which was linked to by Luciano that day on her Twitter Feed, has
been removed from the Today Show Website (although part of the transcript is still there, racial quote and all). From the transcript on Lexis:

LUCIANO: ...the teen gunned down by Neighborhood Watchman George Zimmerman last month as he walked through this gated community wearing a hoodie.

(Clip from 911 call)

Mr. GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he's up to no good. He looks black.

Zimmerman: Hey we've had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there's a real suspicious guy, uh, [near] Retreat View Circle, um, the best address I can give you is 111 Retreat View Circle. This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something. It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy is he white, black, or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

Dispatcher: Did you see what he was wearing?

Zimmerman: Yeah. A dark hoodie, like a grey hoodie, and either jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes. He's [unintelligible], he was just staring…

But, we're not done. These three Today Show airings were not the only, or even the first time, NBC aired one of the mis-quoted versions.

According to Lexis-Nexis, the first airing was on NBC Nightly News on March 19, with Pete Williams reporting. Luciano was not on the show. It was the Nightly News version that was played during Luciano's March 20 segment (that TV Newser found and says contributed to her firing.) Here's the Nightly News transcript for March 19 and the clip that was played:

(Clip from 911 call)
Mr. GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he's up to no good or he's on drugs or something. He's got his hand in his waistband and he's a black male.
Unidentified 911 Operator #1: Are you following him?
Mr. ZIMMERMAN: Yeah.
911 Operator #1: OK, we don't need you to do that.
(End of clip)

That's the same as Luciano's segment the following day, March 20, but different than Luciano's March 22 segment and Ron Allen's March 27 segment.

Also interesting: Luciano was on the Today Show on March 19, and the tape wasn't misedited. So her mis-edit on March 20 was a repeat of the mis-edit that first aired on NBC Nightly news with Brian Williams and Pete Williams.

On March 21, Luciano appeared on the Today Show and while she didn't put statements from different portions of the call together, she left out that Zimmerman's first reference to race was in response to the dispatcher, and merely quoted his second statement, which makes it appear he volunteered the information. The transcript is here.

LUCIANO: Martin was shot by a Neighborhood Watch volunteer last month in this gated community as the 17-year-old made his way back from a 7-Eleven. George Zimmerman called 911, reporting the teen looked suspicious. He then told police Martin was approaching him.
(Clip from 911 call)
Mr. GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: Now he's coming towards me.
Unidentified 911 Operator: OK.
Mr. ZIMMERMAN: He's got his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male.
(End of clip)

Also, Luciano appeared on NBC Nightly News on March 17, but did not play a mis-edited version. She played clips with her commenting in between. There was no reference to Trayvon's race in these clips. The transcript is here.

LILIA LUCIANO reporting: Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was walking to a family friend's home in a gated community in Sanford,Florida, when he was shot dead by a Neighborhood Watch captain. The shooter, George Zimmerman, called police because he says the teen looked, quote, "real suspicious."

Mr. GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: (From 911 call) This guy looks like he's up to no good.

LUCIANO: Zimmerman also told police the man was walking toward him with his hand in his waist band. Police told Zimmerman not to pursue the teen.

(Clip from 911 call)

911 Operator: Are you following him?
Mr. ZIMMERMAN: Yeah.

Where else did a mangled version appear? Al Sharpton on MSNBC on March 19 has a truncated version with the misplaced quote that NBC Nightly News used the same date, and Luciano used the next day, but he at least includes the dispatcher's question about race. While Lilia Luciano appeared on the show, the tape was aired with Sharpton as the narrator, before he introduced her.

REVEREND AL SHARPTON, MSNBC HOST: Here is the call that George Zimmerman, the shooter, made to police.

(BEGIN AUDIOTAPE)
911 DISPATCHER: Sanford police department.
GEORGE ZIMMERMAN, SUSPECT IN TRAYVON`S MARTIN`S KILLING: Hey, we have had some break-ins in my neighborhood, and there is a real suspicious guy that looks like he is up to no good or on drugs or something.
911 DISPATCHER: Is he black, white, or Hispanic?
ZIMMERMAN: He`s got his hands n his waistband. And he`s a black male.
911 DISPATCHER: Do you see what he was wearing?
ZIMMERMAN: Yes. A dark hoodie like a gray hoodie and either jeans or sweatpants, and what looks like white tennis shoes. He is here now. He`s just staring, looking at all the houses.
(END VIDEOTAPE)

Luciano, March 21 Today Show, Selective, misleading quote but does not combine statements from different portions of call

Luciano, March 22 Today Show, Misquote version #2

Ron Williams, March 27 Today Show, Misquote version #2

To recap: While I was the first to report on April 9 that there was an earlier Today Show segment with Lilia Luciano that had the exact same misquote as the March 27 Today Show, according to TV Newser, it's not that misquote that got her fired. TV Newser says she was fired because she had two versions of the call, both mis-edited and mis-edited differently -- the one that aired March 20 and the other on March 22. The March 22 misquote is the one that aired on the Today Show with reporter Ron Allen on March 27.

But, is there a question whether Luciano made the March 20 version with misquote #1, since it aired the night before her segment on NBC Nightly News, in a segment with Pete Williams that she wasn't in? And since the clip that aired in her segment on the Today Show the morning of March 19 contained no mis-edits? In other words, was NBC Nightly News the origin of the clip that played during her Today Show segment on March 20? Or, did NBC Nightly News truncate further the quote from Al Sharpton's March 19 show which aired 1/2 hour before Nightly News? Luciano was a guest on the show, but Sharpton aired the clip before introducing her. Who put the clip together for Sharpton? Who put the clip together for NBC Nightly News?

Of course, that still leaves Luciano with the worst version, Misquote #2, that aired on the Today Show on March 22 and March 27, which is probably just cause for getting her fired. I'm just not convinced that she was responsible for both versions of the mis-edit, or Shartpon's version.

Regardless, when you consider the NBC and the NBC Miami mis-edits together, NBC clearly has some production issues, and they are far more serious than it first portrayed them, as a simple mistake caused by the time pressures of getting clips ready for the hectic morning news shows.

I did not write the following comment. It was written by a commenter named "DontKnowMe." Because it included profanity, without use of asterisks or other characters to mask the words, I deleted it. But this is what DontKnowMe wrote with two changes: I substituted asterisks letters in the profane words, and I deleted his opinion that GZ used a racial slur and not "punks" during the call. That was not an element of any of the false editing, and the topic here is the media's mis-editing of Zimmerman's quotes. I don't want the thread going off topic into what people think Zimmerman said. So don't respond to that part if you read it in his original comment.

Comment by DontKnowMe

Comments on this story seem generally to lack knowledge of how TV News works, as a business and as a communication form.

First, all of this is done on the cheap. The network staffs are all looking to do as little work as possible to keep their payrolls as low as possible. So, as far as the original story goes, yes, Luciano may have edited it herself, or more likely made the edit-decisions which were executed by a techie who could handle all the Chyron and compositing that they throw in to make it look slick.

Once that goes up the wire from local to network, all sorts of production staff are recycling it to fit their own particular shows: GMA, Nightly News, different MSNBC shows, etc. They're mainly changing the heads and tails so the story fits into the wraparounds for their Stars, and cutting it for time. These are low status jobs, likely with very little oversight.

The whole news cycle moves so fast that errors just get embedded in the process and repeated over and over because no one's paying attention.

So it seems like they keep generating new stories about topic X, when basically they're just playing the same thing over and over, and it looks like it has the imprimatur of the august Nightly News, when it was actually just thrown together by the B-squad down at some local affiliate. Why? Because it's cheaper and easier to do it that way.

Now the next thing you need to remember is that this is a the idiot box blare of sound bite society, not a courtroom presentation of evidence. The program editor has assigned the story a length, just like a newspaper editor decides how many column inches will be devoted to a story well before the reporter actually writes it up. So the person cutting the story HAS to edit for time, and has to prioritize 'what is the most important thing', and 'most important' is always what makes a 'sexier' story, grabs 'more eyeballs' gets the viewers to look up from their Cream of Wheat.

In this, Luciano most likely felt she was doing nothing wrong. As Jeralyn noted above, the edit in question cuts out the operators question, and makes Zimmerman's first utterance of "He looks black" seem to be volunteered rather than simply an honest response to a direct question. However, a full forty seconds later, unprompted in any way by the operator, Zimmerman says "He's got his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male." interjecting the issue of race for no discernable reason.

So you're cutting this exchange with all it's verbal subtleties down to two tight soundbites that have to communicate the gist of the situation. Zimmerman did make an odd reference to Martin's race out of the blue, he just did it 40 seconds after the first part of the quote.

.....So do you cut the quote so it seems (falsely) that Zimmerman made no notice of Martin's race, or do you smush it together in a way that falsifies the context of the specific sound clips but is arguably a better representation of the tenor of the call?

I have over 30 years of experience editing actuality footage for (non-political) documentaries, and the one thing I can say for sure is that the media lens always distorts. There is no such thing as objective footage. Your rushes NEVER present the truth, at least not in any way an audience could understand it. You have to manipulate it to make it make sense, and be fair and honest.

IMHO, the edit in question was over the line, and I think the parties responsible should have been fired. But that's a judgement call, NOT a no-brainer.

Lay people always focus on obvious things like the editing out of the operators question. Those are NEVER the most influential parts of the manipulation that goes into story telling. Far more important in this case were the countless news stories that aired clips of this segment of the call:

Z: Sh*t, he's running.
O: He's runnning? Which way is he running.
Z: Down towards the other entrance of the neighborhood.
O: OK. Which entrance is that that he`s heading towards?
Z: The back entrance. Fu*kin __
O: Are you following him?
Z: Yes.
D: OK. We don`t need you to do that.
Z: OK.

There is no obvious manipulation here. I'm not aware of any great complaint rising about this clip. But it stops short of what happens next, which is that Zimmerman loses sight of Martin. The clip, as cut, implies without directly stating, that Zimmerman continued to directly track Martin from that point on until the fatal shooting, and THAT DID NOT HAPPEN. But no obvious edit kerfuffle there. No one's going to get fired.

As a final note, when Fox News gleefully ran their story about NBC's bad edit, the version of Zimmerman's call they played for comparison, their 'real thing' was also, in fact, edited. For time, of course.

Please respond to DontKnowMe and please use asterisks (but not double asterisks which render the text in bold) if you feel the need to refer to the specific profanity used.

And keep your comments to the actions of the media and the mis-editing.

don't know me hits it right on the head, especially about doing TV news on the cheap, feeds from affiliates, and on-air reporters not having time to do their own research.

I've been pointing this out since the controversy started, apparently to no avail.

Jeralyn, you haven't been listening to me. You still don't understand how TV news works. I'm not saying TV news does it right, not at all.

But your exhaustive analysis of quotes (though excellent and well sourced) has nothing to do with the reality of television journalism as I know it.
I worked for local affiliates as well as for a network. I repeat, the reporter in question was fired BECAUSE SHE IS VISIBLE. Firing a lower level person ( who is probably responsible for the bad editing) would not have any impact.

Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was walking to a family friend's home in a gated community in Sanford,Florida, when he was shot dead by a Neighborhood Watch captain.

You see, right off the bat she's lying about what happened. Martin wasn't shot while walking to a family friend's home. He was shot while fighting Zimmerman. He may have been on his way to his father's girlfriends home, but clearly there was a physical confrontation that resulted in the shooting. There's a big difference between shooting someone in the middle of a fist fight and shooting them while they're out taking a walk.

The court case will try to determine why they were fighting, whether Zimmerman grabbed Martin to stop him from leaving before the police came, or if Martin attacked Zimmerman because he was angry about being profiled or having the cops called on him. But whatever the reason, clearly Zimmerman didn't just shoot him while he was walking home, and news reporters are just ginning up racial antagonism by being dishonest about what happened.

MSNBC and Faux News are deliberalty stirring the racial pot so they can continue raking in big bucks from angry audiences on both sides. By the time this is over, if a jury determines that Zimmerman is innocent of the charges, we're likely to have race riots because of the continued misleading of the public by our media.

Thank you Jeralyn for continuing to call them out for their dishonesty.

A fact doesn't have to be proved in court to reported by a journalist.

The prosecution has incorporated the fight into their theory, evinced by the probable cause affidavit and the testimony of Detective Gilbreath in the bond hearing. It's unlikely to be a contested issue in any case to which this prosecution team is a party.

extremely difficult to believe that what we are getting from news shows is in any way a representation of actual events, but the only way to know is to do one's own research, and I would venture to guess that only a small percentage of people do that; how many, for example, would take the time to find an independent source for, and read, the unedited and complete transcript of - in this case - the Zimmerman call?

And this certainly isn't confined to the Zimmerman story; it became particularly egregious during the run-up to the Iraq war - which maybe set new low standards for truthiness, as it now permeates reporting on politics, the economy, legislation, anything controversial or sensational, and for all I know, even the weather reporting is skewed.

Once you do know as much of the story as possible, it's not that hard to divine what the agenda is behind the missing details; once it's out there, and everywhere, it becomes the conventional wisdom and is extremely difficult to counter - people still believe that if they see or hear it on the news, it must be true.

Really, if Luciano gets fired over this, it seems to me that pretty much everyone associated with news programming could be fired for the way they manipulate the news, and by extension, the attitudes and opinions of the viewing public.

This is par for the course. Unfortunately, I doubt you could find a high profile case that was free of media mistakes and/or misrepresentations and, as you mentioned, there have issues way more important than this case, that have been treated worse. So, especially in the era of Fox News and Nancy Grace, it's hard for me to get excited about this instance of media malfeasance but at least NBC took action which is a step in the right direction.

played the most extensive clips of anyone. And Zimmerman did say that line, he just didn't say where the others said he said it. The only thing O'Donnell left out was the discussion of addresses:

O'Donnell March 19

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
GEORGE ZIMMERMAN, SUSPECTED MURDERER OF TRAYVON MARTIN: Hey, we`ve had some break-ins in my neighborhood and there`s a real suspicious guy by retreat view circle. The best address I can give you is 111 Retreat View Circle. This guy looks like he`s up to no good or he`s on drugs or something. It`s raining and he`s just
walking around looking about.
DISPATCHER: OK. This guy, is he white, black or Hispanic?
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.
DISPATCHER: Did you see what he was wearing?
ZIMMERMAN: Yes, dark hoodie, like a gray hoodie. He had jeans or sweatpants and white tennis shoes. He`s here
now. He`s just staring.
DISPATCHER: He`s just walking around there?
ZIMMERMAN: Looking at all the houses. Now he`s staring at me. He`s got his hand in his waistband. And he`s a black male. He`s got a button on his shirt.
DISPATCHER: OK. How old would you say he looked?
ZIMMERMAN: Late teens.
DISPATCHER: Late teens, OK.
ZIMMERMAN: Something`s wrong with him. He`s coming to check me out. He`s got something in his hands. I
don`t know what his deal is.
DISPATCHER: OK. Let me know if he does anything. We`ve got them on the way. Let me know if this guy does
anything else.
ZIMMERMAN: OK.
These (EXPLETIVE DELETED) always get away. He`s down towards the other entrance of the neighborhood.
DISPATCHER: OK. Which entrance is that that he`s heading towards?
ZIMMERMAN: The back entrance.
DISPATCHER: Are you following him?
ZIMMERMAN: Yes.
DISPATCHER: OK. We don`t need you to do that?
ZIMMERMAN: OK.
(END AUDIO CLIP)

Similar for March 20. I didn't check his show for every night, but I didn't come across him misquoting. While I didn't care for his or his guests' commentary, he's a talk show host. Unless you have evidence someone else did a misquote, I would ask you not to make allegations. It's not fair.

I got this completely wrong, and I'm deeply sorry. I must have confused O'Donnell's show with some other one.

I looked at the transcripts for the next few days. On March 20 the only clips from the Zimmerman call were around the suspected racial slur. Then O'Donnell didn't play any clips from the Zimmerman tape at all for at least several days.

There is one misleading edit on March 19. The beginning of the tape is omitted, which means the viewer can't tell that O'Donnell is wrong when he says it's a 911 call.

I didn't come across him misquoting.

I found a number of examples of O'Donnell misquoting various people. But you've said elsewhere that this thread is limited to misleading tape edits, so I'll leave the other issues for another time.

His sounds concerned and responsible when he initiates the call. He doesn't sound like a racist thug, which is how he's been portrayed. I had preconceived notions about Zimmerman after hearing the media story about the incident, and was surprised at the sound of his voice when I first heard his call to the non-emergency police. It sounds pleasantly non-aggressive. He describes the situation in context of the recent crimes. And he doesn't sound sure about the suspect's race. Hearing that call is what changed my mind about the media narrative I'd been fed up to that point.

When Martin stares at him and then comes toward him, Zimmerman starts to sound more concerned, maybe even somewhat alarmed. (Same thing I would have felt.) Then, when Martin runs, Zimmerman sounds frustrated that he might get away before the cops get there (hence, the swearing, "These @ssholes, they always get away"). Even the sound of him leaving his car to see where Martin went. I have to say, I probably would have gone to see where the guy was running to in order to direct the police to the location I last saw him. If I thought someone was casing a neighbors house, and I reported it to the cops, I'd want to ensure they actually had a chance to question him. Whatever Martin was doing in front of that other house, his actions made Zimmerman suspect him, and that's clear from what Zimmerman says on the call.

Is this rhetorical? Do you really hear nothing on the tape that an unbiased person would consider favorable to Zimmerman?

In chronological order, I would start with the dispatcher answering the phone in a way that shows Zimmerman is not calling 911 to report a suspicious person. Zimmerman's reputation for 911 abuse is not wholly undeserved, but it is greatly exaggerated. The exaggeration begins with the claim that the February 26 non-emergency call is a 911 call.

Zimmerman doesn't mention Martin's race until the dispatcher asks him about it, and then seems less than certain that the hooded man is black. He mentions Martin's race only once more, to confirm the description when he has a closer look.

Zimmerman mentions the hoodie after the dispatcher asks for a clothing description, doesn't mention it again, and doesn't say the hoodie is a reason for suspicion.

Zimmerman gives behavioral reasons for being suspicious of Martin. He could be more specific, but the dispatcher doesn't ask him to.

I take the point that Zimmerman's account of Martin's behavior could be a tendentious description of someone 'just walking down the street'. But jumping to the conclusion that this is true betrays some kind of bias.

When Martin approaches, Zimmerman is obviously concerned for his safety, and asks about the responding officer. He does not seem at all eager to be a lone vigilante.

Zimmerman's remark about a*holes who get away, comes just over a minute and a half into a four minute call. He spends another two and half minutes trying to give directions for responding police officers. Granted, this is largely because Zimmerman sucks at giving directions, but it still cuts against the vigilante stereotype.

Zimmerman breaks off his chasing of Martin after the dispatcher suggests it isn't necessary, although not immediately after.

Near the end of the call, Zimmerman makes clear that he has lost visual contact with Martin.

Obviously people may disagree about how exculpatory any given point is. But there is no such discussion if the facts are withheld to begin with.

When Martin approaches, Zimmerman is obviously concerned for his safety, and asks about the responding officer. He does not seem at all eager to be a lone vigilante.

We still have only Zimmerman's account that that's what Martin did; it does not necessarily have to be what actually happened. The attitude you seem to attribute to proof that Zimmerman doesn't want to be a lone vigilante could also be Zimmerman realizing that maybe it had been a mistake to follow this person.

Zimmerman's remark about a*holes who get away, comes just over a minute and a half into a four minute call. He spends another two and half minutes trying to give directions for responding police officers. Granted, this is largely because Zimmerman sucks at giving directions, but it still cuts against the vigilante stereotype.

What Zimmerman actually sucked at was staying in one place, in his car, which would have made it a snap to give the dispatcher directions/location. This is Zimmermans's neighborhood - he regularly patrolled it; it's stretching it, I think, to ask people to believe he couldn't orient himself well enough in his own neighborhood that he couldn't give his location. It is not, however, as much of a stretch to believe he was on the move.

Zimmerman breaks off his chasing of Martin after the dispatcher suggests it isn't necessary, although not immediately after.

You got all that from "OK?" I guess you don't have much experience with asking or telling people to do - or not to do - something, and getting "OK" in response as a way to get you to leave them alone. Zimmerman's "OK" is just as likely only a form of acknowledgment, not an indication he actually ceased following Martin.

Let's face it - we're all biased, even you. What you hear, and the meaning you impute to it is not coming from an unbiased perspective, is it? It can't be - because you don't know what was or is in Zimmerman's head, have no idea what he was thinking or feeling. Neither do I - but there isn't just one reason Zimmerman could have done or acted as he did, and ignoring anything but the most positive reasons seems to me kind of foolish.

Honestly, when I read comments that go to great lengths to tell us what Zimmerman thought or felt I feel like I am reading fiction.

you were looking for an excuse to fire, unless they are saying she does her own editing. Or - even worse - maybe NBC wrote their transcripts of the calls from her truncated reading of actual transcripts on the air?

imply she was the only one at fault. Just that at first I thought she was just reading what was given to her, and after thinking about it more and reading Jeralyn's very thorough post I realized the reporter was probably complicit as well.

who the dispatcher was. I see them referred to in some transcripts as '911 dispatcher', some as '911 Operator', some as just 'dispatcher', and then I read comments that say it was not a 911 line at all, but a non-emergency number. Is it all the same person?

Most joint communication centers - 911 call centers - answer both the emergency calls(someone dialed 911) AND the non-emergency police line. So the person answering is a trained 911 Emergency Communication Officer. However, it appears likely that Zimmerman called the correct line - the non emergency number - in order to make a report of suspicious activity. If he'd had any contact with police prior to this incident - which it seems that he did - then he would have known to call the non emergency number.

Regardless, it is still likely handled by someone that also take emergency calls as well.

It should be pointed out again - that 911 Dispatchers are almost always civilians and their requests do not hold the same sway a lawful police order. In fact, legally you can disobey a 911 dispatcher.

Calls regardless of being received on the various lines non-emergency, anonymous tip line or 911 are received by a communication center call taker, who follows specific protocols in determining the emergency status and prioritization of the call. A different staff member, the dispatcher sends out officers based on dept policies and categorization of the call for service.

GZ appears to be a committed community policing neighborhood partner, not an overzealous paranoid nut. 46 calls for service over 4 years is not unusual.

Maybe that's why the dispatcher said, "We don't need you to do that," as opposed to "Don't do that." If the dispatchers can't give a police order, maybe they don't want their directions to be mistaken for a police order.

I believe there was another instance that night that a dispatcher (same one?) replied to one of the callers with a similar statement. I don't quite recall -- perhaps one of the callers who was going to go outside after the gunshot? Anyway, I remember a similar "we don't need you to do that" statement from a dispatcher.

If you listen to a few of the 911 calls you will hear the phone answered in a standard way. The person answering Zimmerman's non-emergency police call answers in a different way.

I prefer to call the people answering the phones 'dispatchers', since dispatching is what they do. Some people say 'operators'. In this context they are interchangeable terms. Either term may be used for a person answering either a 911 or a police non-emergency call.

You can also verify that Zimmerman made a non-emergency call on February 26 by looking at the call logs. In the heading for each report, after 'Call Source:', you see either '911' or 'TEL'. 'TEL' indicates a non-emergency call.

I'm struggling with what to do with your comment because I don't allow profanity here, the word has to be stated with asterisks in place of some letters. One commenter already repeated it in response and I deleted his comment.

The reason has nothing to do my personal sensitivities, but because censor software used by law firms and other businesses (including libraries) see those words and can put TalkLeft on a list of sites to be blocked. It happened years ago and took me days to (1)track down the software company (which I was able to do through the law firm which emailed me that TalkLeft had been blocked at work), (2) send faxes and try to find a "live" person to talk to (3) get to a person with authority to remove TalkLeft from the list (4) wait for it to filter down to the firms and businesses using the software.

I don't know if that's still how censor stuff works, but I'm not risking it. And I don't have the ability to edit comments, only delete them.

So even though the 911 tape contains those words, if you or anyone else wants to post further on the this, you must use asterisks or the comment will be deleted.

You comment is so long and detailed, I may let it stay. I haven't yet decided. In addition to the F* word and A* word you have the c**n word. If you are still around and can post a duplicate of your comment with asterisks inside the words, it would be appreciated. If not, I'll have to figure out something, but please copy your comment for your computer in case I end up deleting it.

...that when GZ was asked what TM ,looked like his first response was "He looks black", implying, IMHO, some uncertainty. So when he said 40 seconds later, when he got a closer view, "And he's a black male" there's no reason to view that as "interjecting the issue of race for no discernable reason", or an "odd reference to Martin's race out of the blue". It could just be an updated answer to the previous query, more certain in the light of better information.

And what, exactly, is it in -your- audio expertise that results in your being able to distinguish "F*king C*ns" when others claiming such expertise seem to end up all over the map?

I've reprinted the comment without his assumption that punks wasn't used because it is not an issue in the mis-edits and I dont' want the thread to go off topic of the media mis-edits. Dontknowme's opinion as to what words were used by Zimmeran is not relevant here, so let's not discuss it.

The part of your comment I disagree with is that the mis-edits were somehow less egregious because 40 seconds after being asked what race Trayvon was, GZ stated "and he looks black." You wrote

In this, Luciano most likely felt she was doing nothing wrong. As Jeralyn noted above, the edit in question cuts out the operators question, and makes Zimmerman's first utterance of "He looks black" seem to be volunteered rather than simply an honest response to a direct question. However, a full forty seconds later, unprompted in any way by the operator, Zimmerman says "He's got his hand in his waistband. And he's a black male." interjecting the issue of race for no discernable reason.

I (and many others) think there was a discernable reason for the second comment, and it was not out of the blue. We may be right or wrong, and it's still an open question, but a reporter has no business substituting his or her opinion into a factual rendition of what happened, so that the end result supports that opinion.

When the dispatcher first asked him what race the suspicious person was, GZ responded "He looks black." Not "He is black" Or "black" or "He's black." It sounds like he wasn't sure at that point, so he used the word "looks" as in "He appears to be black" or "I think he's black but I'm not certain."

When he saw Trayvon at a closer distance and described his hand being in his waistband, he added "And he's black" . This could easily response to the dispatcher's question.

If Luciano made the same judgment you did, that the comment about race 40 seconds later was for no discernible reason, so it was okay to blend the quotes, then she's a bad reporter, because in doing so, she substituted her personal opinion as to what GZ meant into a direst quote of what he said., taking the statements out of context to fit her assumption. None of us know what GZ meant by that, I have my theory, you have yours, but the point is a reporter shouldn't blend quotes to fit his or her personal opinion of what someone meant.

I also don't think that's what she did here because in other shows, see the transcripts, where she narrated what happened, she never blended those two comments.

you still don't get it. I'm not defending TV news, but you still don't understand how it works.
You assume nets and affiliates take the time to exhaustively analyse their output. They don't because they have to get it on the air.

This is not writing a legal brief. This is instant journalism. Once again, I'm not defending it.
But you still don't understand it.

Sorry about not knowing the profanity rule. Since the subject was the difference between journalistic accounts of things and things themselves, bowdlerizing the transcript seemed like the wrong thing to do, but I understand the issue with search engines.
My reference to "the disputed word" went directly to my point about what TV journalists do (usually pretty badly. They have to take a very large field of information, and condense it down into a ridiculously short news-blip that is easily digestible to the ADHD addled viewers and is faithful to the larger truths of that larger field, as best as they understand them (which is usually not very well at all). If you listen to Mr. Zimmerman's 911 call in toto, especially given the presence of the "disputed word" it is a perfectly reasonable (if arguable) conclusion to draw that he did in fact include race in his profiling of Trayvon Martin.
Editing audio/video actualities is one of those things you really can't understand until you do it. You walk in with some preconceived notions about truth and honesty and recoding machines as disinterested chronicles of truth, and all those get shattered in the first 30 minutes of trying to put something together than makes sense.
What I'm saying is that Luciano cut together a series of sound bites in an order that she no doubt believed represented a fair depiction of Zimmerman's overall state of mind evidenced during the call as a whole. It's not a presentation of evidence. It's storytelling. You tell the story as best you can in the time you have with the parts you have.
Does that mean anything goes? No. As I said, I think the edit in question was over the line. However, I repeat that from a journalistic standpoint, it would actually have been unethical for her to purge the report of any references to race if she honestly felt that the call showed some sort of racial discernment occurring on Zimmerman's part.
And again, if you really want to examine how news stories work, you have to look beyond the obvious places, like the way actuality clips are edited, into things like how they're shot and recorded in the first place, the little verbal intros the reporters use to frame them, and so on.

... just like a newspaper editor decides how many column inches will be devoted to a story well before the reporter actually writes it up.

That's not the norm in newspapers. When editors and reporters talk, they figure out -- usually pretty quickly -- whether a story is going to be in-depth, or a shorter daily story. I've never heard an editor tell a reporter in the morning to write a 16-inch story, for example. In the late-afternoon budget meeting, editors will discuss what they have and the lengths, but again, usually not down to the inch. Editors may then tell a reporter that they can have only 16 inches, but even then, that can often be fudged.

Jeralyn, reporters -- at least, in print -- often splice together quotes, but the good ones manage to convey the meaning of what the person said.

It makes sense that someone like GZ, who grew up with people of different colors, would say "looks black."

by putting sentences together that weren't spoken sequentially, in my experience, the reporters put each sentence in its own set of quotation marks with text or four dots in between, to designate they were not said one right after the other.

The reason I know this is because when I quote news articles, sometimes I want to truncate or combine a quoted person's sentences, and I always end up adjusting the quote marks and including my own "....." between them if they come from different paragraphs.

I may not be explaining this well, but I've never seen a reporter quote someone's statements from different parts of an interview or statement without a designation of some sort the statements were not one quote and said in that order.

when there is a transcript, an audio or videotape available. If a person spoke before a crowd, or it was a delicate court case, reporters would take extra care. Other than court reporters and stenographers, few people can write down every word when someone speaks. So, the editing begins unconsciously in the reporter's mind. They write down keywords and unusual turns of phrases.

Thus: "When I first, you know, moved here to the, um, Cranes Condominiums, I loved to see the, the, um, sandmill cranes." Next might become the subject's discussion of moving trucks or something else that doesn't pertain to cranes. He might end up saying, "You know, back to the cranes, I do love them"
May become: "When I first moved to the Cranes Condominiums, I loved to see the sandhill cranes. I do love them."

Another way that reporters get around omitting stuff is by adding attribution: "....sandhill cranes," he said. "I do love them."

Anyway, none of this justifies what NBC did. I just wanted to correct any misunderstanding about how print journalists work.